How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[cyrano01]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yes, the technology is there right now.  The question is if sub munitions is going to be something that Western countries put back in play.  A very high level decision would need to be made that a) the weapons are legal and b) they would be used if made available.

Steve

My recollection is that the intention was that these things would actually be quite substantial, something about the size of a Hellfire warhead. Probably millimetric radar or thermal image guided, so  not really submunitions in the bomblet sense. How big does a submunition have to be before it is just a 'munition' rather than a cluster weapon and hence verboten.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

As Steve mentioned a couple of pages back, river crossings are going to have to be rethought in the face of drones easily patrolling up and down rivers to find them.

Combat engineering in general isn't likely to be the uninterrupted process it has been in the past with so many flying eyes to find it and bring prosecution against it.

We could end up back to a time when rivers and other natural barriers are much more formidable obstacles just because you can't cross/breach them without heavy losses now.

[Kinophile]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Whoa, that is an idea....a good idea.  I think the answer is yes with a "but".  So in COIN, insurgents do exactly this very broadly; however, they normally do not result in quick operations.  They can produce broad and simultaneous effects though.  

I think you would need some things here to do this and higher precision is one of them.  You would also need a nearly perfect theory of your opponent, knowing exactly where to apply all that slow pressure at exactly the right place and time.  You would also need encompassing enablers and integration.

This is why I keep coming on this forum, that is a very interesting concept - could we do slow grinding at the right place and times simultaneously to create critical collapse in an opponent at the operational level?  Is that what we have seen in this war?  Ukraine has not been employing rapid operational manoeuvre, they have been providing "slow grinding" almost everywhere and it has arguably led to the Russian operational system to buckle and fail. 

Isnt this "just" the shaping operations concept? Dont want to sound dismissive. 

Substitute small for slow and you have the UKR Kharkiv offensive. Arguably, you could say that small local operations can be operationally slow, but cumulatively accelerate into rapid theatre results as local conditions deteriorate and stack up for the enemy - again, Kharkhiv.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Kinophile

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

I wonder how many of them lived long enough to realize they were bleeped?

I don't know art but I know what I like.  And yesterday's RU losses were, once again, terrible. 

As per Dan/CA -michael mckay posted earlier:

Increased Russian losses over the past day: > 350 killed

helicopters +2

tanks +17

armoured combat vehicles +48

military vehicles and fuel trucks +17

artillery systems +9

operational-tactical UAVs +10

That's well more than a BTG worth of armor losses.  And the artillery losses are stacking up. 

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, Vergeltungswaffe said:

We could end up back to a time when rivers and other natural barriers are much more formidable obstacles just because you can't cross/breach them without heavy losses now.

I think we're already seeing that in this war.  Some experts are looking at the Russian advances along the Donets and thinking "they're just getting started" while I'm looking at it and thinking "I think this might be their end goal".  Ukraine will have a very difficult time getting over the river to take back the territory Russia occupies.  Conventionally, that is. 

Unconventionally, Russia is screwed because Ukraine doesn't need to bound over rivers to win the war.  Moving small light units across rivers is still very viable and that combined with remote attrition (artillery for the most part) and Russia's strategic problems (low morale, crumbling economy, manpower shortages, etc.) this just isn't something Russia can win. 

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

The river crossings has me thinking about something else that I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet...

Guess the Soviet doctrine of having all its vehicles capable of river crossings looks better in big exercises than it does on the real battlefield!

I don't think there's any evidence of Russian moving vehicles over rivers too deep to ford without specialized fording features.  Anybody seen the opposite of this?

Steve

[The_Capt]

16 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Put another way, you do the slow grind for a couple of weeks and then you do the fast attack with light forces for a couple of days.  Neither phase requires large scale employment of mass, which is (I think) the issue we're trying to get our finger on... how to achieve traditional breakthrough exploitation without requiring traditional mass.  Right?

Yup, I think you have arrived at the same place but from another direction.  To do a trench clearing as you describe will require a lot of precision up front.  You need so have very high resolution to drop all those bomblets right into the trench onto defenders.  In depth, you need to neutralize artillery and reserves, likely a combination but precision, particularly stuff like NLOS munitions would come in very handy here.  

Once breakthrough is created, back to mass to exploit it, and then as an opponent forms up a precision DLI (really like that term), you are back to precision to eliminate, until conditions are back to being able to employ mass.

Trick here, and always the party pooper, will be logistics.  You need it for the mass, and you need to protect it from your opponents precision weapons coming back at you.

This is basically a new spin on tempo but now precision and mass are the driving factors.

[MikeyD]

I'm still unclear about the 'final phase' of the war where Ukraine actually expels Russia from the currently occupied territory. Especially where water barriers are involved. Perhaps we shouldn't have scoffed at the idea of Ukraine taking delivery of old M113s.

Edited May 11, 2022 by MikeyD

[domfluff]

12 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The river crossings has me thinking about something else that I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet...

Guess the Soviet doctrine of having all its vehicles capable of river crossings looks better in big exercises than it does on the real battlefield!

So, on this point.

I've convinced myself that Soviet (and therefore Russian) tactical and operational art is built on sound principles. They may not necessarily be the best solution, but I believe they're based on a sensible, logical foundation, and are a workable solution to the problems they have been faced with.

Part of that is the centralisation, and part of that centralisation is the huge assumption that your centralised commander is highly competent. So much rests on their shoulders, that they can't just be good at their job, they have to be excellent.

River crossings are complex - there's a reason why it's *the* classical tactical problem. I believe that leaning towards amphibious vehicles makes a huge amount of sense in the context of the operational scheme of things, but whether that translates into something actually workable in practice, when you have to involve layers of less-than-perfect leaders and corruption, is a different story.

I do think that there might be an answer to John Curry's "Why Cold War Warsaw Pact Tactics Work in Wargaming" which he doesn't mention in his essay - that a wargame (professional or otherwise) is generally going to involve far fewer people than the real thing. That wargaming is inherently centralised, and that the pieces can work together extremely effectively.

https://20thcenturywargaming.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/why-cold-war-warsaw-pact-tactics-work-in-wargaming/

So... yeah. I do think the Soviet/Russian focus on river crossing is really important - and you can see that in current Ukraine. What I'm less convinced is that this army (or the one who went into Georgia, or the one who went into Chechnya, and perhaps, maybe, earlier ones still) can actually perform this to any reasonable degree of success. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by domfluff

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Yup, I think you have arrived at the same place but from another direction.  To do a trench clearing as you describe will require a lot of precision up front.  You need so have very high resolution to drop all those bomblets right into the trench onto defenders.  In depth, you need to neutralize artillery and reserves, likely a combination but precision, particularly stuff like NLOS munitions would come in very handy here.  

Once breakthrough is created, back to mass to exploit it, and then as an opponent forms up a precision DLI (really like that term), you are back to precision to eliminate, until conditions are back to being able to employ mass.

Trick here, and always the party pooper, will be logistics.  You need it for the mass, and you need to protect it from your opponents precision weapons coming back at you.

This is basically a new spin on tempo but now precision and mass are the driving factors.

Well, I think we get into the need to qualify what "mass" is in relative terms.  A company of light infantry concentrated for an exploitation operation does qualify as "mass".  But if that sort of exploitation "mass" that a NATO force would deem sufficient?  I don't think so.  Too light in terms of quantity and in terms of capability (e.g. not all arms combined force).  So by NATO standards the attack I've sketched out doesn't fit the traditional definition of "mass".

As such, the measure of logistics is quite different.  The light force I'm talking about could theoretically live off the land if it had to.  But you'd not want to plan on that, so each soldier would be more kitted out like a paratrooper with extra munitions and rations to elongate time in the field without support.

When the unit needs resupply the logistics are much easier.  A civilian car loaded up with a bunch of ammo crates and rations could resupply a whole platoon, for example.  Something impossible to do if any portion of the force was mechanized.  Which means that the "mass" needed for logistics is on a very different scale than is traditionally associated with a NATO style attack.

Drones, comms, good knowledge of the terrain, friendly civilians, etc. all play into this working out well for the Ukrainian light force on the attack.

Well, after all that I just thought of an easier way to summarize it.  I'm saying Ukraine can take back large amounts of terrain by simply upscaling Special Forces doctrine with the highly skilled individuals of SF swapped out with "mass" of normal infantry.

Again, the low mass attack I've described has no real chance of working against a well prepared, well motivated, well resourced combined arms defender operating with confidence in their chain of command.  Fortunately for Ukraine, this is not the enemy it faces

Steve

[Combatintman]

22 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Yes, but for a major set piece attack it is a SMALL technical leap to have every drone preprogrammed with both the GPS coordinates, and an hour old image of the section of trench it is supposed to hit. Preprogram everything, flight path, the attack angle aligned with the trench angle, the whole bit. And then just have them either hit the whole system at once when your troops are close enough to make them man the actual fighting positions, or key on movement in their tiny little assigned trench zone. 

Funnily enough what we professionals call drones did exactly that (minus being able to kill stuff) - I used to have to tell where such drones were needed and what needed to be looked at with the target being along the line of an upside down 'U' (in this case a slightly curved 'U').  The route out was on one side and the route back along the other side of said 'U'.  Wikipedia I know but I also know that this is reflective of my experience ...

Being a drone meant that it flew a programmed course and was not under any form of external control. In the CL-89 the programmed flight path was constrained by the very limited number of 'events' that could be programmed. These events including turns, changes in altitude, sensor activations/de-activations and landing. The programmed flightpath had to be corrected for meteorological conditions. Data for this was provided by a standard artillery Target Acquisition meteor message.

My bold ... and why professionals of a certain era do not call things that can be controlled in flight by someone on terra firma without the presence of people sat in the air frame, drones.

Wikipedia article in full ...

Canadair CL-89 - Wikipedia

This system left British Army service in 1991 - apparently the trucks were driven off the pier at the end of GW1.  If you search hard enough there is some BBC footage of one being launched during that conflict ... apparently, according to my gunner friends from 40 Field Regiment Royal Artillery with whom I had a close acquaintance during said war who'd heard the yarn, Kate Adie was most disappointed that she had not stumbled across a British truck-mounted cruise missile launcher ...

Kate Adie - Wikipedia

 

 

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, I think we get into the need to qualify what "mass" is in relative terms.  A company of light infantry concentrated for an exploitation operation does qualify as "mass".  But if that sort of exploitation "mass" that a NATO force would deem sufficient?  I don't think so.  Too light in terms of quantity and in terms of capability (e.g. not all arms combined force).  So by NATO standards the attack I've sketched out doesn't fit the traditional definition of "mass".

As such, the measure of logistics is quite different.  The light force I'm talking about could theoretically live off the land if it had to.  But you'd not want to plan on that, so each soldier would be more kitted out like a paratrooper with extra munitions and rations to elongate time in the field without support.

When the unit needs resupply the logistics are much easier.  A civilian car loaded up with a bunch of ammo crates and rations could resupply a whole platoon, for example.  Something impossible to do if any portion of the force was mechanized.  Which means that the "mass" needed for logistics is on a very different scale than is traditionally associated with a NATO style attack.

Drones, comms, good knowledge of the terrain, friendly civilians, etc. all play into this working out well for the Ukrainian light force on the attack.

Well, after all that I just thought of an easier way to summarize it.  I'm saying Ukraine can take back large amounts of terrain by simply upscaling Special Forces doctrine with the highly skilled individuals of SF swapped out with "mass" of normal infantry.

Again, the low mass attack I've described has no real chance of working against a well prepared, well motivated, well resourced combined arms defender operating with confidence in their chain of command.  Fortunately for Ukraine, this is not the enemy it faces

Steve

No I am envisioning a light screen outfitted very much like the UA SOF/Light.  Armed with a lot of drones and ISR to do the infiltration, high resolution fix, and tight finish ops at points of breakthrough- a break in battle if you will.  This done broadly provides opportunity for formation level breakout - that mass.  One can ride that until it gets friction-ed up by an opponent and then we are into rinse and repeat.

I am not so sure about that last para of yours.  We had a lot of that and it showed particular weakness for light infantry armed with a lot less than what we are talking about for over 20 years.  Now if a peer-adversary were able to put out a light screen of their own...and we are back to unmanned battle.

I suspect against a highly trained and capable opponent in defence a combination of mass and precision will be required for the breakthrough.  Remember they can see and hit to our depth as well, if we were to try and form up mass to do the job, we would likely get hit back in the assembly area.  So there would have to be a blinding phase up front, and we are back to precision.

The more I look at this precision and mass are mutually supporting, or should be.  At different points the virtues of each will be needed.  On the other axis will be manned and unmanned.  And on a third it has to be information.  Victory will likely be to the ones who can manage these axis the best depending on the point in time in the battle.

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Being a drone meant that it flew a programmed course and was not under any form of external control.

Heh.  I for one gave up calling the current crop of flying things Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which is their proper title, because pretty much everybody calls them "drones".  So I usually go with the flow to be in with the hipsters

Steve

[Kinophile]

40 minutes ago, Vergeltungswaffe said:

As Steve mentioned a couple of pages back, river crossings are going to have to be rethought in the face of drones easily patrolling up and down rivers to find them.

Combat engineering in general isn't likely to be the uninterrupted process it has been in the past with so many flying eyes to find it and bring prosecution against it.

We could end up back to a time when rivers and other natural barriers are much more formidable obstacles just because you can't cross/breach them without heavy losses now.

I have my doubts. This presunes that drones are an insurmountable tactical obstacle, or at least prohibitively expensive (men/material).

For the Ivans, right now in this war - yes, river crossings are now extremely dangerous. They always are, but my understanding is that the idea is to bridge rapidly and get across asap.  Ie GTFO out of the self-generated fires sack. Part of the protective aspect for the bridging units is that the enemy should be unaware until too late, and ideally that you cross at Multiple points simultaneously.

As a simple example, even against CMBS AI, I never cross at one point. I chose at least two, wait to see which point hets crossed and secured first then reinforce the bejaysus out of that one, turning it into my tactical CoG.

 In the example here, UKR caught on early and responded quickly.

Rus dont have the gear, training or imagination to do a crossing different that what they've done by rote in unhindered exercises. 

But in the future, any competent military will have local Anti Drone units covering the crossing, and up/down the river at least 4km.

[G.I. Joe]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Heh.  I for one gave up calling the current crop of flying things Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which is their proper title, because pretty much everybody calls them "drones".  So I usually go with the flow to be in with the hipsters

Steve

Yes, it does seem like the drone vs. RPV (remotely-piloted vehicle) distinction has fallen by the wayside and drone has come to mean UAV. A case of linguistic evolution, I suppose, and the word beats abbreviation logic of widespread usage makes sense...

Edited May 11, 2022 by G.I. Joe
Corrected acronym to abbreviation

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

No I am envisioning a light screen outfitted very much like the UA SOF/Light.  Armed with a lot of drones and ISR to do the infiltration, high resolution fix, and tight finish ops at points of breakthrough- a break in battle if you will.  This done broadly provides opportunity for formation level breakout - that mass.  One can ride that until it gets friction-ed up by an opponent and then we are into rinse and repeat.

The friction aspect is, I think, a pretty universal element to whatever type of attack we're talking about.  After breaking through (or walking around) the enemy's initial positions, you go until something makes further advance too costly/risky.  Deal with whatever friction is causing the angst, then keep on going.  How that is achieved is, of course, situationally specific.

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am not so sure about that last para of yours.  We had a lot of that and it showed particular weakness for light infantry armed with a lot less than what we are talking about for over 20 years.  Now if a peer-adversary were able to put out a light screen of their own...and we are back to unmanned battle.

Which is why I included the huge caveat in the last line.  The concept I outlined is specific to this war at this time.  I don't think it is applicable elsewhere.  As the conversation started it's life about what is going on in Kharkiv, I focused on that and not potential doctrinal changes for NATO.

However, I think many of the principles of utilizing mass and precision with all the new/emerging ISR capabilities is going to shake things up quite a bit even for NATO.

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

The more I look at this precision and mass are mutually supporting, or should be.  At different points the virtues of each will be needed.  On the other axis will be manned and unmanned.  And on a third it has to be information.  Victory will likely be to the ones who can manage these axis the best depending on the point in time in the battle.

Yes.  There's conditions for which nothing is better than mass, but I think we're getting to the point where mass is becoming less necessary.  It's not just precision weaponry or drones or EW or any other single thing.  I think the combination of a wide array of things creates more situations that can be successful without mass being a central element, if it is even needed at all.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

For the Ivans, right now in this war - yes, river crossings are now extremely dangerous. They always are, but my understanding is that the idea is to bridge rapidly and get across asap.  Ie GTFO out of the self-generated fires sack. Part of the protective aspect for the bridging units is that the enemy should be unaware until too late, and ideally that you cross at Multiple points simultaneously.

Not quite right.

To successfully cross a river of any particular width requires quite a bit of time.  Plenty of time to be observed by a drone.  In fact, several of the unsuccessful Russian river crossings seem to have been incomplete before they were wiped out.

Then there are all the signs of complications from the chosen crossing points, such as the banks giving way and vehicles getting bogged.  This takes time to get things straightened out.  Time is the enemy, so losing a couple of hours because a tank is stuck right at your entrance or exit point is a big problem.

Plus, it isn't as simple as a one time push to get a ton of stuff over a water obstacle before the enemy spots you.  Pushing a mechanized force over a river requires sustainment for it to be effective.  That requires a constant flow of supplies, which means the bridgehead has to hold as long as it takes to achieve the mission.  Which is unlikely to be measured in hours, but rather days or weeks.  Again, plenty of time to find that bridge and wipe it out.  Then whatever forces have crossed are effectively cut off unless they secure some other way across the river (directly or indirectly by linking up with a neighboring force).

Drones totally f' all of this up because it gives the enemy nearly unlimited chances of spotting the bridge and significant opportunity to bring in resources to destroy it.

Steve

[Haiduk]

56 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The river crossings has me thinking about something else that I'm surprised nobody has mentioned yet...

Guess the Soviet doctrine of having all its vehicles capable of river crossings looks better in big exercises than it does on the real battlefield!

I don't think there's any evidence of Russian moving vehicles over rivers too deep to ford without specialized fording features.  Anybody seen the opposite of this?

 

Three days ago was information from locals near Borova, two Russian armor crews decided to try river crossing in floating way. But they could't - vehicles deadly stuck in the muddy soft groud on approach, so they just abandoned it. 

I think, for crossing a water obstacle afloat you need to know appropriate place for this. This will take a lot of time for engineer recon tasks. And you know how Russians advanced even without a maps or with 20-30 years old maps.

Most of UKR rivers on their way don't have convenient approaches/exits to/from the water as minimum from one side. The banks either covered with dense bushes and trees, or enough steep, or have muddy shores, which in "rasputitsa" time turn itself into the trap, or the bottom of rivers are unpassable for tanks (slime, drowned tree trunks, stones). So, Russians forced either to capture bridges or keep close engineer units - from brigade/division level to army and even district.    

Edited May 11, 2022 by Haiduk

[Suleyman]

The RU command doesn’t know what dispersion or concealment means, can someone check the Russian dictionary if they have those terms. 

[dan/california]

12 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

I have my doubts. This presunes that drones are an insurmountable tactical obstacle, or at least prohibitively expensive (men/material).

For the Ivans, right now in this war - yes, river crossings are now extremely dangerous. They always are, but my understanding is that the idea is to bridge rapidly and get across asap.  Ie GTFO out of the self-generated fires sack. Part of the protective aspect for the bridging units is that the enemy should be unaware until too late, and ideally that you cross at Multiple points simultaneously.

As a simple example, even against CMBS AI, I never cross at one point. I chose at least two, wait to see which point hets crossed and secured first then reinforce the bejaysus out of that one, turning it into my tactical CoG.

 In the example here, UKR caught on early and responded quickly.

Rus dont have the gear, training or imagination to do a crossing different that what they've done by rote in unhindered exercises. 

But in the future, any competent military will have local Anti Drone units covering the crossing, and up/down the river at least 4km.

In the future any competent military will also have drone sensor packages unobtrusively nailed to a tree every kilometer or so to watch something as important as a river that is a major piece of your defensive line.  Literally all  you need is a well thought out militarized cell phone with glue patch on the back. We are, mostly, in this war, talking about drones being used in single digit numbers in any one area. In the next war drones and drone like things are going  to be employed by the hundreds at a minimum.

[Huba]

2 minutes ago, dan/california said:

In the future any competent military will also have drone sensor packages unobtrusively nailed to a tree every kilometer or so to watch something as important as a river that is a major piece of your defensive line.  Literally all  you need is a well thought out militarized cell phone with glue patch on the back. We are, mostly, in this war, talking about drones being used in single digit numbers in any one area. In the next war drones and drone like things are going  to be employed by the hundreds at a minimum.

It was always striking me as an obvious thing to do - if we have city-wide CCTV systems (and apparently AI to recognize people faces...), it should be a mandatory element of any defensive zone, certainly a one that you had a time to prepare, like trench system of Donbas. 

[Haiduk]

3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

For context, could you possibly remind us of the overall TD force size on 22 Feb and now? Round numbers, ISTR 140,000? 

According to 'shtat' we should have 25 TD brigades with 110 000 of personnel (but brigades have different number of battalions according to the number of districts in oblast) . But. On 24th Feb TD units weren't mobilized.  Rapid Russian movement and sabotage of local authorities before the war in questions of support of TD units establishing caused that TD units in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts almost wasn't rised up. "Paper" Crimean TD brigade doesn't count. Kherson city TD battalion was gathering and supplying about half of day - fighters got only rifles, bullets and hand grenades and with all this armament their battalion, when personnel never seen each other and comamnder before this, was sent against Russians!

So, real number of TD servicemen is too lower. Number of volunteers, attached to TD battalions probably will be blanc spot forever - on example of Kyiv defense, this was Brownian motion. Big part of TD units to this time stay in the rear, especilly in western regions. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Haiduk

[Hapless]

24 minutes ago, Huba said:

city-wide CCTV systems

On this note, back on Day One over the CM Discord we watched the Russians rolling up to the bridge at Nova Khakova on live Ukrainian traffic cams. I recorded some footage the morning after and at one point there was at least a couple of VDV companies stacked up on the road in a traffic jam. One air/arty strike and they would have a seriously bad day.

[Edit: And here it is:]

(Then some Russians climbed up the poles and started knocking the cameras out. Which was also fun, because you could chart the progress of this one truck camera disabling team going down the road.)

The sheer volume of OSINT at the start of the war was crazy, the tricky part as always is how to deal with the information overload and exploit it in a timely fashion (if possible).

Edited May 11, 2022 by Hapless

[Battlefront.com]

30 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Three days ago was information from locals near Borova, two Russian armor crews decided to try river crossing in floating way. But they could't - vehicles deadly stuck in the muddy soft groud on approach, so they just abandoned it. 

I think, for crossing a water obstacle afloat you need to know appropriate place for this. This will take a lot of time for engineer recon tasks. And you know how Russians advanced even without a maps or with 20-30 years old maps.

Most of UKR rivers on their way don't have convenient approaches/exits to/from the water as minimum from one side. The banks either covered with dense bushes and trees, or enough steep, or have muddy shores, which in "rasputitsa" time turn itself into the trap, or the bottom of rivers are unpassable for tanks (slime, drowned tree trunks, stones). So, Russians forced either to capture bridges or keep close engineer units - from brigade/division level to army and even district.    

Thank you for that!  And when a river crossing starts badly, it usually ends badly.

When researching Soviet/Russian amphibious vehicle capabilities all of the factors you mentioned were discussed.  You can clearly see in the big Soviet/Russian exercises that they carefully choose well prepared crossing points.  That is not what happens in real life!

Two other problems commonly mentioned are maintenance and currents.  A poorly maintained vehicle is likely to sink and even a successfully floating one has limited abilities to fight currents.  The wider the river, the stronger the current, the less likely the vehicle will hit the exit point on the other side.  And as you say, it's not like a random spot is likely to work.

I have always viewed the swimming aspect to be more strategic in nature than tactical.  What Russia needs now is tactical crossing capabilities and that seems to be bridging.

Steve

[Cederic]

3 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Drones are like the introduction of aircraft carriers during WW2. Drones will become just another munition for tanks and SP guns.  

I disagree.

The future is swarms: overwhelm defences through sheer numbers.

Manufacturing output and logistics won World War 2 and is defining this war. The country that can get more airborne (semi)autonomous weapons to the front line will win every battle.

Modern manpads reach 23,000 feet? Optical and thermal imaging on a few dozen lightweight drones at 30,000 feet directing the swarm of small drones onto enemy drones, onto infantry, identifying the targets for the larger seeker drones that can top-attack armour..

Sure, defenders can hide in a bunker. But you can't take and hold territory with drones, merely deny it, and if the defenders can't halt your advance, you have control and initiative.

Less effective against heavily civilian areas and against asymmetric insurgency but tanks and SP guns aren't your primary options there either.

(If all this sounds sci-fi, so did switchblade drones a decade ago)